Chapter 7: Fascism
1. Preview
Fascism: idea of an organically unified national community “Strength through Unity”
- Individual Identity is absorbed into community
- A ‘new man’ or ‘hero’ is one who dedicates his life to the glory of his nation/race.
Two Traditions
- Italian Fascism: absolute loyalty towards totalitarian state
- Nazism: Anti-semitism/racism
2. Origin and Development
First appeared between WW1 & WW2
Against the idea of the Enlightenment
Ex:
- Nazi Germany: “1789 is Abolished”
- Fascists Italy: “Believe, Obey, Fight” & “Order, Authority, Justice”
2.1. Taking It’s First Shape
19th century most ideas and doctrines existed but not popular
Fascism popularized after WW1
Italy: One-party fascist state by Benito Mussolini, March on Rome
Nazi: National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler
Most of Europe got Democracy over turned + Outside (Japan, Argentina)
Fascism came from a number of variables between World War 1 & World War 2
- Many young democratic governments in Europe
- Democratic governments appear weak on international level in economic/political crises
- Industrialization threatened lower middle class
3. Fascism and the State
Extreme Statism: idea of all powerful/totalitarian state
Extreme Racism: one race is superior to other races
3.1. The Totalitarian Ideal
Popular during Cold War
Totalitarianism became a symbol of anti-communist view
Generic Fascism usually is totalitarian in 3 aspects
- Creation of a ‘fascist man’, loyal, dedicated, and obedient man to the state (no individualism)
- The good of state > The good of individuals
- Leader with unlimited authority
- Monism: believing on a single value system, one source of truth
‘Everything for the state; nothing against the state; nothing outside the state.’
Nazi Germany came closer to to realizing the totalitarian ideal in practice than did the Mussolini regime.
3.2. Corporatism
- Corporatism’s Assumption is: Business and labor are bound together and can work together for national interests.
- To heavily incorporate organized interests into the processes of government
- fascists sought to transform human consciousness rather than social structures
- Corporatism was the ‘third way’ or an alternative to both capitalism and socialism, denying elements from both sides
- Capitalist’s Free Market: leads to unrestrained pursuit of profit
- Central Planning: leads to class war
3.2.1. Authoritarian Corporatism
an ideology and economic reform closely linked with Fascist Italy
- Ideology: alternative to capitalism and socialism based on holism and group integration
- Economic Reform: government’s direct political control over industry and organized labor.
Strengthen Government
3.2.2. Liberal Corporatism
A nature found in mature liberal democracies where companies are granted and institutionalized access to policy formulation.
Strengthen Groups
3.3. Modernization
Mussolini and Italian Fascists saw states as an agent of modernization
All other forms of Fascism are backward-looking, highlighting glories of the past
Italian fascism was forward-looking
- Futurism: a movement that glorifies industrial life, factories, and machines, and the rejection of the past
4. Fascism and Racism
Not all fascists are racists, not all racists are fascists
Italian Fascism was a voluntaristic form of fascism, where it could embrace people regardless of diversity.
Fascism and Racism
- has come from racist ideas
- emphasize militant nationalism: the action of starting wars to achieve their goals
4.1. The Politics of Race
Race cannot be changed or decided. But it’s used to reflect cultural stereotypes
- Blacks as criminals
- Muslims as terrorists
Core assumption of racism:
- Political and social conclusion can be drawn from difference between races in the world
Racist association with conservative nationalism
Stable and successful society must be bound together by a common culture and shared values.
Therefore, ‘non-whites’ were banned from entering European nations as it threatens ‘white’ cultures
Religion Based Racism
- In the 19th Century, the Christian peoples were thought of as ‘superior’ over the ‘heathens’ of Africa and Asia.
- The Ku Klux Klan also got their justification from the bible
Racism based on Quasi-science
Nazi Germany claims inescapable nature of people that are supposedly backed up by scientific beliefs.
4.2. Nazi Race Theories
Anti-Semitism existed before Nazi Germany, from religious beliefs that Jews are evil because:
- Jews were responsible for Jesus Christ’s death
- Jews were denying the divinity of Jesus by not converting to Christianity
19th Century, Racial Theory: pseudo-scientific ideas used for social and political issues
- Defined Jews as a degraded race, rather than a culture group
First Scientific Theory of Racism
Joseph-Arthur Gobineau
There is a ranking of races
- Aryans: are white people who are the most developed and creative
- Jewish: are uncreative
He was pessimistic, saying that intermarriage had progressed so far that the glorious Aryans civilization had already been corrupted beyond repair.
Nazi Race Theory
Nazism presented the Germans as the force of ‘good’ while the Jews as the force of ‘evil’ and divided the world’s races into three:
- Aryans: were the master race, ‘the founders of cultures’, and responsible of all the world’s creativity.
- Bearers of Culture: people, incapable of creativity, who use ideas and inventions by the Germans
- Jews: the ‘destroyers of culture’ who conflict against nobles and Aryans.
Genocide
As the ‘master-race’ Nazis took on expansionism and war
- Germans were superior biologically, therefore they wanted world domination
- Germany cannot be secured as long as Jews exists, therefore 6 million Jews were persecuted and eventually killed.
4.3. Peasant ideology
Italian Fascism: embraced the modernizing force and the benefits of industry and technology
German Fascism: had a distinctively anti-modern philosophy, sees modern technology as decadent and corrupt
Nazi viewed Germans as
- to have simple existence
- to live close to the land
Industrialization and urbanization undermined the German spirit and weakened racial stock.
Impact on politics:
- The concept of Lebensraum: only territorial expansion will enable Germans to have the peasant experience
Hitler started rapid industrialization however (opposite to Nazism)
- Nazism’s peasant ideology turned into rhetoric
- Nazism stayed on peasant ideology but Germans are shown modern technological weapons all the time.
5. Fascism in a global age
Most would say Fascism all ended after world war 2 with the suicide of Hitler.
After the Cold War, globalization strengthened right wing extremists to draw on fear of immigration weakening national identity.
- Yugoslavia: re-emerged racial hatred, extreme nationalism with fascist type features
- Some form of religious fascism as ‘Islamo-fascism’
But current day, fascism doesn’t exist anymore
- Far right anti-immigration groups have different roots and challenges
- Multiculturalism in Europe is so divers it’s impossible to create a pure national community
- traditional class division of fascism replaced with complex and pluralized post-industrial social formations
- Economic globalization made national borders less important and expansionism unlikely
Modern Fascism
- underground, illegal groups still have the same militant revolutionary fascism of Hitler or Mussolini
- Larger parties says they were either never Fascists or to have broken off from fascist ideology
- Neo-fascism: fascism broken from absolute leadership, totalitarianism, and overt racism
Fascism isn’t only a political system
- Fascism is only a world view, political movement
- A nihilism against enlightenment project